How long did you stay in hospital, do you remember?

Ten days, I had to stay ten days, 'cause of the issue of flipping, letting my daughter's dad see her. So, basically my specialist midwife said to me, “Mind your p's and q's” when, when she heard that [partner] was outside. And so I assumed that, that's alright I can go out as long as I minded my p's and q's, nobody told me any.

What does that mean?

Nobody told me anything about if you take your baby out to show him we'll probably get a care order, but you know what happened? When they found out that I'd gone out with the baby the midwife who'd just told me, “You can go and see him for a little while but mind your p's and q's”. Suddenly made a big show and came back and got my file open, wrote down that she'd advised me not to see him, she made a fuss about going on about the guy on the door saying, “Oh you shouldn't have let this happen, you can lose your job”. Big meeting, the Social Worker comes down, the Social Worker's really happy 'cause the Social Worker's been saying, “She should, I should get a care order all along”, and like I've been fighting all the way with groups of people persuading them, “No I'm [laughs] I'm going to be an alright mum, I'm going to yoga, blah-blah-blah,” and the Social Worker's really pissed off that I managed to keep the baby before the, you know, in the pre-birth protection meeting. So she was like really gleeful, you see the glint in her eye when, when suddenly, you know, she's got the evidence that she can get the care order. I'm sitting there like really miserable because I'm totally lost you know? And then when we went to London and went to the protection meeting I remember vividly being in this protection meeting I'm seething with this midwife for landing me in it and she's there, and she's trying to pretend it's all, that she didn't do that to me, she just sort of.

And how old is your baby at this stage?

She's about four months.

And fully breastfeeding?

Fully breastfeeding and I remember her letting rip, you know? And I was, I might have even breastfed her at that child protection conference, I don't know if I did or not I probably, I was probably too scared to. But I know when she let rip, I don't even know I might've breastfed after she let rip, I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me if that's what happened, or I just gave her a cuddle, I think I was too embarrassed to breastfeed in front, there was just so many people there, you know?

And what was the outcome of that meeting then?

I got her off the protection register, and like they were saying, “Oh like it's very unusual for a kid to get off the protection register after four months”.

Why do you think that was?

Why do I think? Well 'cause every time I had to do one of these big meetings I argued my case, you know, argued my case and, you know, you're talking about ten, sane, rational, professionals out there and all they're dealing with is this sort of like tilt of institutional prejudice one way or the other but they're fucking rational people. So I would just give them my case and, what could they do? You know, a policemen sitting there, he's not going to think I'm dangerous.

What would you like to say to the health professionals or Social Workers?

What would I like to say to them? What d'you mean the ones who have dealt with my case?

Yeah, anybody, what would you like to say about your experiences that might be helpful to them or to other people that they deal with or the way things are handled?

I'd say, people like me doing [laughs] like your specialist services, like have baby yoga and have energy work and have tai chi and help people withdraw and, don't bully people, and get your career and get your next job on the back of bullying somebody else, you know, it's your big committee meeting, Miss flipping whoever she was, she's, you know, she was just doing her little stint here and then she'd buggered off to fucking South London, some nice place and, goes to her next rank in the profession and she wasn't very sensitive, you know? She was trying to be really sensitive and always she was extremely good at her job in terms of like making you trust her and like, “I'm really going to help you”. But at the end of the day... they're just, they create, from a natural point of view the West and the birth, the pregnancy is just, it's a taboo subject, people have to lie down for that flipping Louis or whatever, people didn't lie down to give birth, people didn't, you know, why is it that you've got formula milk? You've got formula milk because the American Army came up with, you know, nutritional standards in the fifties. What the hell are we doing? We're all going round with these red books with centiles because of the culture that they began, and, you know, other places where people haven't had to big deal with this deluge of bullying, and in that way I suppose they do have to deal with bullying, and people trying to shove [infant formula] down their kids throats and stuff like that, they just like perfectly happy breastfeeding, it's perfectly natural sleeping with your kid and, what is the big deal? Why are you so hung up? No wonder you've got loads of neurosis, no wonder you've got kids all, you know, with attachment problems.

Yeah getting in touch with my body through the pregnancy and through the breastfeeding. Well I don't know, while you're in the pregnancy the hormones were so strong because I was, like really going through a process of withdrawal because I was nurturing myself through a process of withdrawal and using yoga and swimming to help that process I was, producing my own endorphins, I was pretty fit, I was producing strong hormones and they were just totally evident during my pregnancy. When the breastfeeding came along and it came to that point, God I have, I mean at that point I [laughs] it was almost a back seat, I just wanted to, get somewhere safe with [daughter], without people picking on me. And, I ended up staying with my school friend's mum and there we shared a bed and so it was, you know, it wasn't, you know, again I'd get a lot of stuff from, from her and from them about, you know, don't over-breastfeed and, you know, do it at certain times and, you know, let the baby be on their own a lot and don't, you know, carry them round all the time. It's all like, you know [laughs].

How do you feel about that sort of stuff now?

Well I just, I just feel, oh right that was the right context, you know, they bailed me out of this situation, and she came all the way to London and said, “I'll let her live in my place, she can keep her baby”. Look I was in another subservient position and I just had to sort of like, take it and like, you know, take on as much as I, because it was all well meant, there was no, there's nothing not well meant in any of the regulation that was going on. But just basically tried to go with my own instinct.

Don't answer this one if you don't want to but I'm wondering was your decision to breastfeed in any way a lever to make sure you kept your baby with you?

I wouldn't put it as strongly as saying it's a lever, but it was absolutely obvious to me and [daughter] that we were, we hadn't landed in the, safe place we expected to land, and through the pregnancy, I know there were lots of ups and downs but I was really making an effort to try and make sure that she, in a physical form landed in a safe place, and it was a safe place but it was quite different to what we both were heading for in terms of a ship going on a particular course or something, and so we were drawn together very much by the breastfeeding, we were drawn together by everything. And then when I came to live here it was a bit, it was a bit different and so I would even say that probably, you know, maybe that's where I might've started to get it wrong because, you know, she was happily breastfed and she's still happily breastfeeding and, you know, this doesn't seem like there's any, you know, we've talked about her stopping when she's four, on her birthday, and that's what we talk about now, all the other drinks she's going to have instead.

Did you have a health visitor or anything like that?

Yeah there'd be a health visitor and she was, she was nice and that was all fair enough she didn't, I don't think she, you know, there's a whole sort of culture of like the baby's weight and going to visit and, [pause] and I suppose in some ways if you can breastfeed and it's all happening and it's all alright and you're not that bothered about all that side of the thing, and there's no failure to thrive business going on, 'cause [daughter] was exactly on the middle to, of the centile, she was right on the line she was, at birth she was seven and she just carried on, on that line so they, you know, they couldn't have me for that, you know?

Did you feel good about that?

Of course I was feeling the complete bloom of having a baby and like how beautiful it is to have a baby and, watch them and be with them and [pause], you know I felt all that, but at the same time I think, you know, my emotions were going quite up and down.

You said to me that, not many women in this area breastfeed, why do you think that is? What are the barriers?

Well one of the reasons they'd say that, one of the reasons that they'd say is because in a culture where, where man is sort of like prioritised, you don't, you don't, you don't put money into good nutrition of the woman so she can give, give breastmilk, you go down and get formula that is exactly right, that means that your kid will develop at exactly the right rate they're supposed to, so it does what it says on the tin, and you don't necessarily know that your wife is going to do what is, you know, going to do the same. So it's just a different culture. And also the whole body beautiful culture will be on the western working class women it's like, you know, you are some mad, middle class sandal-wearing hippy if you breastfeed, sort of and but I'm, I don't know, I think that's a prejudice. I reckon probably, I think that, I think the tide is turning and probably women are turning on to the fact that they're, it's the easiest thing to do is breastfeed, it's totally natural.

What do you think we can do to help push that tide along?

I think that's a good question that is. I think you should basically subsidise good food and so, you know, women really become conscious of the fact that the nutrition that they're giving their baby is part of the nutrition they're giving themselves and, that they have to look, you know, that, that it's good to look after yourself so that your baby thrives But I think women know that, women really know that anyway, it's only because of social reasons that people like, don't like you doing it here or.

So what sort of social reasons? Can you just… 

It's so, it's just like, it, I came to the understanding that it was just one of the things under a whole, among a whole host of, you know, need to regulate that comes out of people and it's to do with the way they were abused as kids, and you really discover as a kid, you really discover as a mum, you know, you basically try and sort of fight off these different cycles of abuses coming at you, regulating you, saying, “No that's what happened to me so it's got to happen to them, no you can't possibly”, it's like a taboo reaction, you know, they're all like hysterical reactions, and so funny because you're like really emotionally charged with all your hormones as a pregnant woman and then, having given birth and you're, you're sort of at the same time extremely calm because of all this oxytocin you're producing and, you know, you just watch these triggered reactions from different people, and it's the ones that are close to you that really have an effect and may really throw you from your course. But a lot of them, you know, as the rings go out, you can see, that's really interesting, and then you go, “Well, how was that person treated when they were young?” and like there are reasons why it's so important for that person that you don't breastfeed any more, past two years old. Or whatever other reasons that, you know, the same with, people trying to ply your kid with sweets, you know, it's exactly the same it's what happened to them and it's like, somewhere it, I, nobody is a cycle of abuse because that's how it seemed to me, because that happened to you as a kid you've got to pass it on, but you have to because it was done to me, you've got to, that's the way it is, and then they kind of go through their reaction and then they go, you know, you can just deal with it as a reaction coming from them.

She was happily breastfed and she's still happily breastfeeding and, you know, this doesn't seem like there's any, you know, we've talked about her stopping when she's four, on her birthday, and that's what we talk about now, all the other drinks she's going to have instead.

So this is a conscious conversation…

Yeah.

…that you and she have?

Yeah.

She's a party to this?

Yeah.

In deciding that this is what you will do?

Yeah, so come her fourth birthday we'll see what happens, I hope, that's what happens.

Are you frightened of weaning?

I'm frightened because I've tried, I've tried to wean and if I have a puff of joint or whatever then I think, 'Oh God [daughter] can't drink for another twelve hours' but [daughter's] going, “what do you mean I can't drink? I can't drink milk for another twelve hours, what are you talking about?” that's why it's difficult for me, that's why I can't say on camera that, you know, over the past three and a half years I've used anything and [daughter's] drunk my milk. Even though within the medical profession it's well-known that's what happens at birth is you, you know, if you get a mum to breastfeed then you can wean that way rather than give the baby a low, a load, a script or whatever of drugs whatever. I've also not gone back onto Prozac because I don't want her to get, you know, antidepressant's, but I'm in a dilemma because I've managed three and a half years and I'm falling apart, I need antidepressant's, you know, I need something to help me, particularly to help me, you know, stop using anything, you know, that I shouldn't use it. I mean I don't use anything bad, I have like, there's been bad ups and downs but there's been, it's been three and a half years, I've been a fucking saint compared to what I used to be, because, for the sake of [daughter]. But that's one strand, the other strand is what's going on is an eating disorder business. So you wean from milk to food, so you wean from some kind of regulated, you know, I don't know what the sort of biological, I don't know what the word is, you know, your emotional regulations and your biological and how it all knits up together to eating solid food at mealtimes or in some other environment that's regulated. And I'm finding it very difficult to get [daughter] to eat anything, and I find it very difficult for her to eat any of the healthy things I try and get her to eat. And, all I remember from my mum is her eating too much all the time, and all I remember from being three is being really fat and being fed loads of chocolate and coke by my nanny, and that being how you got looked after. And, you know, my dad's, my dad's mum died when he was five and, he's never had a sort of regular eating childhood of like, you know, that kind of regulation, that kind of like nurturing and love. And my mum obviously didn't have it because she had a problem all her life so, for some people the whole idea of like, you know, first of all I did try to get into it and during babyhood we'd do all the things like steamed vegetables and mash them up, puree fruit, do all the little finger food and stuff like that, and somehow or other she's kind of like gone through a phase of that during her babyhood and then into her toddler hood and then into her young kid hood and gone, “I don't like any of that stuff I just want the breastmilk, and plain pasta, and if you're lucky a baked potato, but apart from that I'll eat all the sweets that you, that you're used to and that you ate for your childhood” and, and I'm in complete crisis, I feel like I really need somebody to say, “You can come and stay with us for a week and we'll both, we'll look at, you know, empowering you, or self-determining how you wean or feed your daughter and yourself successfully”.

So are you getting pressure to wean from anybody else, from outside?

Well obviously, you know, it's a bit freak it, you know, people consider it very freaky, I mean I think you get these pressure points don't you? You get these, these times, specific times when everybody weighs in, and they all weigh in and they keep weighing in and then they realise they're not getting anywhere so they forget about it, and then you'll get another point and people will suddenly click and go, “Oh, two, gosh that is a, that is, you shouldn't be breastfeeding what's going on? There is a problem” and then they might get to two and a half and they go, “Now there really is a problem?” and, “let's have another go” and they weigh in and try and persuade you.

How do you deal with that? Do you not tell people that you're breastfeeding? Do you tell people that you're breastfeeding?

I don't, I well I'm sure, I'm pretty sure most people don't know, my dad knows and my dad [pause], you know, people who know me know.

So you feel as though you need help with weaning?

I need help with [pause].

And help with looking after yourself at the same time?

I need help with, giving, you know, I'm, at the moment all I'm trying do is make sure when [daughter] comes home from nursery she'll have something that is, that is food.

Nutritious.

Nutritious. And because [daughter] just refuses nearly everything apart from the doughnuts and sweets, she gets doughnuts and sweets and, subsequently she's got rotted stumps in her teeth and she's going to end up like me having a disorder around food and not knowing how to regulate with food and when I come out, I feel like I've come out of this whirlwind of the whole pregnancy, birth experience and I realise, some, some people, some Mum's relentlessly cooked and provided, put meals on the table three times a day, relentlessly for years, that's weird, what? I'm supposed to do that now am I? And it's like how the hell am I going to do that? I've just, I can just about cope, when I get my dole money I can just about cope with the next three days, you know, I'm good, but, you know, and if I see, I've seen a picture of me when I'm three, and I've looked at this picture of this person and I've thought, 'Who the hell's looking after you?' and like and then I think, then I think, 'Well, What is the narrative? What is the history? Oh yeah I was with my nanny, and what were you doing? Oh yeah you always had, as soon as you walked through the door you had, you could get, get two bars of chocolate, and you opened your cans of coke, and you just hung around and you watched telly and wait for someone to pick you up'. Then, that's what I remember about food, and you know they say that thing about the family that eats together prays, you know, the family that prays together eats together, no the family that prays together stays together.

Stays together.

The family that eats together this is what I ask some days is my dad thinks, 'The family that eats together stays together', well we don't eat together we're all over the shop. And if I, the other thing is that I started a relationship and there's a lot of smoking, like we do a lot of smoking, and you sort of like munchy out and then, you don't, you know, when you stop smoking for a few days you don't bother to eat that much, and then you only, eat loads then pig out again. And [pause] I feel like I really need to be taken in hand about organising meals. It's like, it doesn't, I don't know about that, you know, I'm trying, I'm doing it all right, it's just that it's, I'm finding it really hard and a lot of the time she'll come home and lunch will be a chocolate doughnut [pause] you know? And I'm frightened of her going, “No please let's not have chocolate doughnut, let's have some pasta and broccoli”.

Is there anything else you…

[Laughing].

…want to tell me about the breastfeeding side of things?

So then I've like, I've started a relationship and, you know, [daughter] will go to sleep in one room and we'll be in his bed, go to bed and at about six o'clock in the morning or even before that, four or five or whatever, [daughter] will come in and then from six o'clock in the morning she's breastfeeding. And it, it's a bit of a revelation to this guy and that's what [daughter] did, she's been doing that for all of her life, she always slept pretty well, she started to sleep through the nights since she was a baby.

Sleeping with you?

Yeah. And, you know, and she just, that is part of her, it's, almost feel's like she's going this is my right, how dare you even think about taking this away from me, this is my right, this is my time with you, and, you know, this is my milk I should get it whenever I like, I should get it in the day, alright I'm putting up with the fact that I get it only at night and in the morning, but I should get it in the day, I should get it whenever I want. And she doesn't, she does know that other kids aren't getting breastmilk, my dad has told her, there's loads of other people keep telling her, all the other kids her age who don't drink their mother's milk. So I don't know let's hope, I'm hoping that the four, four year old thing, is going to work that these, you know, she'll, there'll be a party, there'll be loads of other drinks there she says, and that's when she's going to stop drinking milk.

Are you able to do other things with her and distract her when she wants to have a feed during the day and you don't want her to?

Well yeah, I mean, no specific thing that we do apart from, you know, I, we've sort of got to a point where we don't in the day, and also, like because, as well if I'm, you know, if I'd had a smoke then it'll be like you're allowed a count of ten or twenty on each side, so it's like a weaning process. It does feel like she's a very conscious partner in this, and she's always been like that, and we've been through a hell of a lot together, and she's, yes, she's like, “Yeah that's fair enough, so okay I'll take twenty, count of twenty or count of ten on each side” and she's happy. Which does make me think that she's going to consciously, you know, agree to stopping.

You've obviously been able to reason with her and make some sort of a bargain?

Yeah. I suppose it does become a bribery thing sometimes as well like, you know, “There's no way you're going to have any milk if you don't clean your teeth” and that, that's all part of it as well, despite the fact they're falling out. And I heard that breast that people, mothers who breastfeed risk their baby's teeth, or their kids teeth rather than their baby's teeth because when they fall asleep on the breast their saliva stops cleaning and attacking the bacteria that's attacking the teeth. And I'm, I don't know I think maybe, well I think maybe my dad would say, “Oh, that makes sense”, you know? If her, if her teeth are all like, in a really bad way.

You're talking about breastfeeding caries, have you seen a dentist about that?

I'm not sure if the dentist or somebody has told me that, I think it might have been a dentist, it was her dentist in fact, it was her dentist who said, she asked did she drink at night? Did she have a bottle in bed? Did she breastfeed? And she said, “Oh well don't breastfeed, always” what she said, “Don't breastfeed just before they go to bed because they, the saliva can't protect their teeth”.

*Footnote: A small percentage of at-risk babies will develop dental caries in spite of breastfeeding not because of it. Good dietary and oral hygiene practices will help with prevention. A dentist should be consulted about treatment.

Yeah I did but in a way I still have the legacy of my record because it means that, I can't ask for help any more [laughs], in the way that I used to and for like, for example, I haven't gone onto, back onto, antidepressant's. But I was on antidepressant's and they said, “Oh if you don't take them you're going to relapse”, right?, “If you don't, if you don't take them for over six months, if you” because I stopped taking them and they said, “Oh if you don't then you're going to relapse” and I ended up, getting involved in this other culture of self-medicating, using, you know, street drugs and dealt with my depression that way.

Was this after [daughter] was born?

No this, this was like, this was like years ago.

Oh back.

So I don't know how I started talking about that, what were we talking about?

Antidepressant's, you said.

Oh that's right, so I haven't gone back on them because I'm breastfeeding I don't want her to be a Prozac junkie. So, and also when I was pregnant I was on a methadone script for twenty ml, and there, you know, they have a, it's a very low dose anyway in there.

So when did you start that, when in your pregnancy? Do you remember?

That would've been about five months.

And did you have that right through?

No because what I did is that I used it in the same way that I used all my other drugs. So I'd like stockpile it and then when emotionally I couldn't take it any more [laughs] I'd, I'd use it to help me, and then what would happen is to, then I'd sort of came, you know, I'd come out of that, spin out of that one and go, “Oh God what the hell's going on here?” and then you'd go, “Oh right, right, well ah” even though, even though the line is that you are, that you, that you take twenties, you take a script of twenty ml a day and then when you give birth, you wean through the breastmilk, so you can carry on taking the twenty ml and the baby's still not going to withdraw because they're getting the breastmilk. They're not going to withdraw anyway from twenty ml, twenty ml's peanuts, it's buttons. But I felt at that time I want to withdraw while I'm pregnant rather than do all that, so because I wasn't really using it at that much I was just, you know, I'm, a very emotional person so the whole hormone, drug, physical, inhabiting your body, energy work it's all fucking the same, and it's just, it was a case of taking nine months to wean from one area to another.

So by the time you got to the birth you were off everything?

By the time I got to the birth I was off everything, I was off everything and I would be, get back in the environment where I was taking and using before and I wouldn't be using. So I'd be going on a long walk and I wouldn't be taking any Speed. I was pure, my own endorphins from having swum however many lengths, gone to yoga, you know, that week or whatever. It was just, I'm telling you God, this is happening, the reality of it was the physical body and the organism, physically, the dialogue between the two physical bodies got through that weaning process and that is why I'm in crisis now partly because we're still weaning and I need help to wean. And I can't, I can't, you see because I think [daughter] naturally, is naturally weaning herself now we've got to night time and morning, and if she asks me in the day then I say, “No” and we only have it at night now. But that weaning process, is inscribed in the weaning process for the two of us as we went through that nine months, in the same way that other people do it in a, in a biological way with everything that they consume, you know, all the, they realise they can't drink wine any more or, you know, they think, 'Oh I don't want to like breathe in all this carbon monoxide or, you know, it's just totally environmental, physical thing.

So you began solids for her, doing all the baby stuff?

Yeah. About, from about the usual age from about six, seven months or when, probably from about four, five.

And she took it ok then but she's rejecting it now?

I'm pretty sure that she would eat fruit like pear, and apple, and banana, and, if you, you know, pureed a vegetable then she'd eat breadsticks and, it felt like she went through all the sort of normal thing, it was, you know, she could join the mainstream thing in terms of eating but now it doesn't feel like that at all. It doesn't feel like that at all and it, there came a point where me and my dad would just revert to eating what we usually eat, adult food, but she just wouldn't eat it.

What do you mean by adult food?

Like, well like veg curries, that's what he makes so that's what we live on, it's usually, cook up some vegetables and have them along with some rice. And so she gets to the point where she wouldn't try any vegetables but she'd eat the rice, so then we got this tofu, so she lived on tofu for a long time, so we just, she'd just eat chunks of tofu. And then again the whole, you don't know if it's, you know, but might be my dad, it's because I, you know, it seems to me that I'll get my dole money and I'll go to the shops, and Thursday and Friday we'll have a meal and then Saturday and Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday it's like I'm trying to get myself to give her a meal every day when she comes home from nursery. But, a lot of the time she doesn't eat it and a lot of the time she's eats sweets and chocolate instead, like she expects some chocolate doughnuts as soon as she gets out of nursery.

Do they feed them in nursery?

The thing is right [sighs], God this is a right bummer right? She should be in the full, she would've been fed at nursery but I didn't accept a full time place, she could've had a full time place from now, but I didn't accept it because I know [nursery teacher] you see and [daughter] went to her nursery for a term, and that meant she lost her place, so now she's on a few hours a day instead of a full day, and so she doesn't get them, the dinner.